Mr. Joe Healy:

On the last point, hedgerows are protected under the basic payment scheme. Planning permission or some sort of permission is necessary to remove them and they have to be replaced. The target is 1.4 million m to be planted over the next few years.

We are opposed to another carbon tax because history shows that the carbon tax introduced in 2011 made no impact and carbon emissions increased. In those arguments, it is very important that we do not pluck figures out of the air. The Central Statistics Office, CSO, figures show that the cattle numbers in the past three years went from 6.9 million in 2015 to 7.2 million in 2016 and 7.3 million in 2017. That increase is a long way short of 1 million head.